Chapter IX: Out of the Gloom

Besides James K. Simpson and myself, there were in the camp two white women, the wives of the murdered Gowanlock and Delaney. These unfortunate ladies were dragged from the bodies of their dying husbands by the savages and taken to camp, where they were purchased from their captors by John Pritchard, Quinn’s half-breed interpreter, and another half-breed named Pierre Blondin. Pritchard deserves all praise for his unselfish and loyal part, for had the Indians retained possession of the women it is not difficult to divine the fate before them. A few words from their stories of the massacre will be found of interest. Mrs. Delaney says:

“The first we knew of the uprising was on the 2nd of April at five
o’clock in the morning. Two of Big Bear’s Indians entered our house
and told us our horses were stolen by the half-breeds, though they
were themselves the thieves. Soon after, some thirty more, armed and
mounted, came to the house and forced their way in. They took all the
arms and ammunition they could find, telling us they were short and
required them. They said they wished to save us from the half-breeds.
They took us first to Mr. Quinn’s, where they had a long talk about
holding together to keep back the half-breeds when they came to take
the provisions. From Quinn’s we were taken to the church, where mass
was being celebrated, but they would not permit the priests to finish
and ordered them to return with us to our house. We were left to
ourselves for about an hour, the Indians surrounding the house. It
was then about half past nine in the morning. Big Bear came in and
told my husband he feared some of the young men intended shooting the
whites, but that he at least would be safe.

“A little later they ordered us all to go to the Indian camp. We
departed, my husband and I with the others, taking only what we had
on our backs, as we expected to be only a short time away. Before we
had gone far the Indians began to shoot down the whites. Mr. Quinn
was shot first, though I did not see him killed. All the shooting was
behind my husband and me, and until otherwise informed I supposed
it was into the air. I saw Mr. Gowanlock fall. As he dropped Mrs.
Gowanlock leaned over him, putting her face to his. As two shots had
been fired at her husband, I thought she had also been hit.

“After Mr. Gowanlock fell I saw some frightful object, an Indian
hideously painted, aiming at my husband. Before I could speak he
staggered away, but came back to me and exclaimed: ‘I am shot.’ He
fell then. I called to the priest and he came toward me. Then the
same Indian fired again. I thought the shot was meant for me, and I
laid my head upon my husband and waited; it seemed an age, but the
ball had been for my poor husband and he never spoke afterward.

“Almost immediately another Indian ran up and ordered me away. I
wished to stay, but he dragged me off, pulling me along by the arms
through the brush and briar and through the creek, where the water
reached to my waist. I was put into an Indian tent and left there
until nightfall, when John Pritchard came and purchased my release
with horses, and I believe both Mrs. Gowanlock and myself owe to him
our escape from terrible treatment and subsequent death.

“I was terribly stricken down. I seemed demented and could hardly
tell on one day what had occurred the day previous. I went on and on
as in a fearful dream, but seemed conscious all the while of my home
at Aylmer, and my longing for it seemed alone to keep me up. I was
afraid to ask for my husband, but the half-breeds told me later that
they had buried him.

“As I was being dragged away I saw the two priests shot. Father
Fafard fell first; then Father Marchand. On four different nights
Indians approached our tent, but the determination of Pritchard and
some other half-breeds saved us.”

The following is from Mrs. Gowanlock’s story:

“When we left the Delaney’s house no one knew what was about to
happen and I do not think it was supposed any of us were really in
danger. We all started at the same time. We had gone only a few paces
when the Indians began firing. When I saw Mr. Williscraft fall in
front of us I knew all were being killed and became greatly alarmed.
I saw an Indian aiming at my husband by my side. In a moment he fell,
reaching out his arms toward me. I caught him and we fell together.
I lay with my face resting upon his and his breathing had scarcely
ceased when I was forced away by an Indian. I was almost crazed with
grief, but I remember seeing the two priests shot and Mr. Delaney.
They were before me. One of the priests was leaning over Delaney.
It all seemed like some horrible dream. I went through it dazed and
stunned, with power enough left in my limbs only to follow, as the
Indian dragged me after him through coarse brush and sloughs, which
wet me through and tore my clothes and flesh. I must have suffered
intensely, but grief and terror rendered me unconscious of pain.

“I asked to be put with Mrs. Delaney, but the Indian, who understood
sufficient English to know what I meant, answered no and pushed me
into his tent. The squaws inside noticed that I was shaking with cold
and took off my shoes and dried them and offered me something to eat.
Blondin came a little later and bought me for a horse and thirty
dollars. I was then permitted to join Mrs. Delaney in Pritchard’s
tent. Like Mrs. Delaney, I dread to imagine the treatment to which we
would have been subjected had it not been for Pritchard.

“Big Bear came frequently into the tent to see us. Pritchard would
interpret and the chief professed sorrow, telling us it was the fault
of his braves whom he could not control.”

The unutterable sadness on the faces of these two poor women is ineffaceably stamped on my memory. We could offer them little beside our sympathy, and when I first saw them after the massacre I doubted if they would survive for a fortnight the fearful ordeal through which they had passed.

Nine men were killed in the massacre:

Thomas Trueman Quinn, a native of Minnesota, thirty-eight years of age, of mixed Irish, French and Sioux blood, successively interpreter, clerk and agent in the Canadian Indian service.

John Delaney, farming instructor, a native of Ontario, about forty years of age.

John C. Gowanlock, from Parkdale, Ontario, about twenty-eight years of age.

George Dill, about forty years of age. He came from Muskoka, Ontario, to Frog Lake in the fall before the massacre as my partner in a trading business.

John Williscraft came to the West from Southampton, Ontario. He was a mechanic, about sixty years of age.

William C. Gilchrist, clerk for Mr. Gowanlock, about twenty-one years of age.

Charles Gouin, a Columbia River half-breed, employed at Frog Lake building the agency stores and houses. He was about forty years of age.

Rev. Leon Adelard Fafard, a native of Quebec, where he was born in 1849.

Rev. Felix Marie Marchand was born in France in 1858.

In addition to shooting Quinn, Wandering Spirit was first to shoot Father Fafard. The priest was hit in the neck. He fell on his face, and Papamakeesik, who had been brought up by the priest, stepped out and finished him with a shot in the head.

FOUR SKY THUNDER (LEFT) AND OKEMOW PEEAYSIS (BIG BEAR’S THIRD SON).

_Facing p. 80._
]

Dill and Gilchrist ran. They were followed on horseback by Little Bear, Maymayquaysoo, Kahweechetwaymot, and Iron Body, overhauled and shot down about three hundred yards away.

The bodies of the two priests and of Gowanlock and Delaney were placed in the cellar beneath the church and the earth walls thrown in upon them. Quinn and Gouin were buried in the cellar of Pritchard’s house. Within a day or two of the massacre all the buildings had been burned by the Indians, including the two that were the sepulchres of the murdered men.

The church was burned by Four-Sky Thunder, who received a sentence of fourteen years for his act.

Apologists for the Indians—I listened to one last summer; he had not been born at the time the events regarding which he held forth transpired—are fond of explaining that but for the obstinacy of poor Tom Quinn there would have been no massacre; that it was his refusal to comply with the demand of Wandering Spirit and follow the other whites to the Indian camp that drove the war chief—already keyed to a high pitch of excitement—in a sudden burst of fury to loose the fatal bullet. In other words, that the butchery was not premeditated but the sequence to Quinn’s insane defiance of the fiery Cree leader at a critical moment.

This, no doubt, is a pleasant theory and I am struck with admiration at the assurance of the men who make it, but unfortunately it has no foundation in fact, being built on entire ignorance of the situation as it existed that 2nd of April morning. I am as ready as anyone—more, I am _anxious_ that full justice be done the Indian and his many fine qualities—but I am not prepared to hear without protest the blame for the tragedy placed on the shoulders of my good friend Quinn, who is past answering for himself, in order to bolster up a case for and excuse a lot of bloodthirsty and cowardly ruffians who were condemned by a majority of their own people. Quinn knew Indians—he had good reason to know them, as will be evident to anyone who has been sufficiently interested to follow this narrative so far; moreover, he was himself part Indian, and if he declined to go to the Cree camp it was because he knew that if he were not safe on his own ground he certainly would not be safe among the Indian lodges. It is my opinion that Quinn had satisfied himself these Indians were determined to kill him and decided that if he had to die nothing was to be gained by prolonging the suspense, meanwhile being exposed to their threats and abuse—of which I had seen something earlier in the day—until Wandering Spirit had worked himself up to the proper degree of ferocity to commit the dastardly act.

In view of these facts, therefore, I was pleased, long afterward, to get from Louis Goulet—who like myself was present at Frog Lake on that fateful day—the following details of happenings which did not come under my personal observation and which I should otherwise have had no means of learning. They constitute a deeply-significant addition to what I myself knew and saw of the morning’s proceedings, confirming my own conviction, not only that the massacre had been fully determined upon the night before if not earlier, but also that Imasees was its chief instigator and the war chief, if not his active abettor in its incitement, at least quite ready to assume the leading rôle in carrying it out.

Goulet’s English being difficult of rendition in print, I give his story from the standpoint of an onlooker as it was told to me:

Goulet, Nolin and Nault had spent the night of April 1st at Frog Lake and next morning before sunrise they met at Gowanlock’s, two miles below the settlement, on the way back to their camp at Moose Creek. Gowanlock and his wife were still up at the Delaney’s and Gilchrist was alone. The half-breeds dismounted, tied their horses outside and entered. Gilchrist was up and they accepted his invitation to breakfast.

They were seated at the table, when the door was burst suddenly open and Imasees, an uplifted pukamakin in his right hand, rushed in. A look which he saw on the face of the chief’s son Goulet interpreted as boding no good to Gilchrist. He sprang up and caught the Indian by the arms. Imasees swung his belligerent gaze on the half-breed and shouting, “You’re the man I’m after!” backed out of the house, dragging Goulet with him. A crowd of the young men of the band, armed and painted, stood about outside.

“Get on your horses and come up to Frog Lake,” Imasees ordered. “You’re not going back to Moose Creek. And bring the white man with you.”

Goulet took Gilchrist up behind him on the saddle and the half-breeds started, the Indians trailing along in the rear on foot.

Presently the sun pushed a huge crimson shoulder above the skyline. It was a perfect morning.

“Ho!” cried Imasees. “I like to see the sun get up that way—red, like blood. It’s a sure sign of victory for the Indians, always!”

Goulet turned to Nolin, riding beside him, and spoke in an undertone. “What’s he talking about? Who are they going to fight? Victory? What’s he mean?”

At the Roman Catholic Mission they were met by Wandering Spirit. He ordered them to dismount.

“I want you to interpret,” said the Indian to Goulet. “Ask him”—he pointed to Gilchrist—“who he thinks will win, Riel or the government? Whose side is he on?”

Goulet put the question. Gilchrist laughed.

“The government, of course—I’m with the government. The half-breeds can’t win.”

“What does he say?” queried Wandering Spirit. Goulet told him.

A sinister look swept the war chief’s face. “That’s all I wanted to know,” he said significantly. “Come with me.” And placing Gilchrist ahead, he stalked off.

(“The Indians liked Gilchrist,” Goulet explained. “I suppose if he had said he sided with them they would have tried to spare him.” It struck me that Goulet might have helped the white man here, but I expect he feared to give anything but a correct interpretation of his reply.)

The balance of his story I shall try to tell in Goulet’s own words.

“Pretty soon,” (said Goulet), “I meet Charlie Gouin. I say, ‘Charlie, where’s your rifle?’ Charlie says, ‘De Injin take it at my house, ’fore I’m up.’

“Well, dat don’ look ver’ good. Dere’s goin’ be trouble, sure, I’m say to myself. And dere is. You know how it go—at Quinn’s office, at de church, over on de hill ’front to Johnny Pritchard’s house. No use to tell ’bout dat. You been dere—you see. Me, I’m t’ink I’m goin’ ’scape away, ba gosh! But I’m never get de chance!

“Quinn an’ Gouin’s standin’ ’front to Pritchard’s. Wandering Spirit’s comin’ up, order Quinn go on de Injin camp. Dere’s little patch de snow side to de hill yet.

“Quinn take few steps; he’s want to pass by dat patch de snow. Wandering Spirit say, ‘Go straight!’ Quinn go on roun’. Wandering Spirit say: ‘You always want go your way. Do w’oat I tell you—go my way!’ Quinn smile, keep on. Den Wandering Spirit t’row up hees gun an’ shoot an’ Quinn fall.”

(Goulet’s story here hardly corresponds with my own. I think Goulet did not remember clearly just what occurred at this time; I should be surprised if he did. He was alarmed for his own safety, thinking of escape. My own account of these details comes from the war chief himself, from what I myself heard less than half an hour after the massacre, when the murderer strode up and down through the camp and I listened while he cried out his own report of what he had said to Quinn, the agent’s replies and of what followed. I scarcely think Wandering Spirit would have given a wrong version of an event of which he was then boasting.)

“Dat half-crazy feller you know,” Goulet went on, “run up, hol’ his gun on me an’ say: ‘Give me your money!’ I’m say: ‘I got no money.’ ‘Well, give me your horse,’ he say. ‘Quick.’!

“Of course, I give anyt’ing—dat—crazy feller goin’ killed me, sure! ‘All right!’ I say.

“It’s den I run on de pries’ stable to get my horse, Waychun runnin’ ’long protect me, de time you see me.

“But w’en I get on de stable, she’s empty; an Injin outside, he’s sit on my horse. Dat’s de same feller’s take Charlie Gouin’s rifle; he got it on hees hand. Well, I’m pretty—scare’. I’m run up, grab dis feller on de leg an’ give him swif’ hois’. He’s land on hees head, odder side my horse.

“You bet dat feller’s mad like—! He’s jump up, swear de bes’ he know how on Cree an’ shove hees rifle on my face. I’m get—close shave dere, Cameron! But Waychun step ’front to me—shove hees gun on dat feller’s face. So of course he don’ shoot. Dat’s twice on few minute Waychun save my life. I don’ forget dat, you bet! Many sack flour I give Waychun after dat.”

From there Goulet, still accompanied and protected by Waychun, struck for the Indian camp, passing me on the way as already related, and it was the “half-crazy feller,” riding the half-breed’s horse, who halted me about the same time and instead, as I anticipated, of shooting me, to my unutterable gratitude, told me to “Go on!”